There is a silver lining though, when everyone is in the same class, better off people don't think they can escape and push to make the program better for everyone.
Teachers only really teach the middle third - the top third can be ignored because they can do it for themselves while being bored.
The bottom third can’t be helped because they won’t be helped without a huge amount of energy by the teacher (for little rewards), and so won’t do it for themselves while being bored.
The middle third is all that gets schooled because they can at least be bumped up a little higher towards where the under-achieving top third thus rests.
> better off people don't think they can escape and push to make the program better for everyone.
Your solution is to make the smart kids suffer so maybe they can force the educators to do better? That’s insane. It’s also not going to happen.
Do you know what will happen? Any parent with the means will scrape together cash to pull their students out and go to private schools. Or they’ll hire tutors after school and force their kids to sit down and learn what they should have been learning during the day.
This fantasy where the smart kids rally together to overhaul the system because we banned them from taking advanced classes is a delusion.
I was in a gifted program in grades 5-7, stopped going mainly because I had to travel to another school to attend and it was inconvenient.
I didn't "suffer" being in classes with folks who weren't at my level. The teaching staff did a great job and I never felt like I was being shortchanged. My undiagnosed ADHD means I goofed around a lot, but several of my friends told me after high school that they appreciated me because I helped them see learning from a different angle than their parents or the teachers.
Great that it worked for you. I believe everyone should have the choice.
However, please don’t force your experience to be the only allowable experience for others. If some students want to take advanced classes, we should let them.
Refusing to allow students to learn at a faster rate is insanity.
As someone else mentioned somewhere in this thread, what about public schooling prevents students from learning by themselves? In my experience, the best students I know generally didn't become so due to public or private schooling, but simply personal interest and drive (and perhaps talent, but that is also school-independent).
But you can't tailor one program for kids with different abilities. You shouldn't even try. You should give each individual what they need to succeed to the best of their ability. That's the core of inclusion and equity. You know, the classic comic of the three kids trying to look over the fence?
AFAICT many private schools are worse than public schools. Parents put kids into private schools so that they get good grades and extra-curriculars to let them get into the good universities. So that's what private schools sell -- good grades. It's less important that they have the education that the good grades imply.
I have no doubt schools like that exist, but in every location I’ve lived and interacted with parents the private school educations they sent their kids to were no question a cut above.
I think this idea that private schools are no better are even worse is a wishful thinking narrative. Private schools, especially the more expensive ones, naturally select for parents who are more involved. More involved parents are highly correlated with better student outcomes. That alone means private schools are correlated with better outcomes. It honestly doesn’t really matter if it’s cause and effect or correlation, parents send their kids to private schools because they want them in the mix with other students selected into the higher performing environment.
>The average private school mean reading score was 14.7 points higher than the average public school mean reading score, corresponding to an effect size of .41 (the ratio of the absolute value of the estimated difference to the standard deviation of the NAEP fourth-grade reading score distribution). After adjusting for selected student characteristics, the difference in means was near zero and not significant.
For math:
>The average private school mean mathematics score was 7.8 points higher than the average public school mean mathematics score, corresponding to an effect size of .29. After adjusting for selected student characteristics, the difference in means was -4.5 and significantly different from zero. (Note that a negative difference implies that the average school mean was higher for public schools.)
In the context of the specific discussion here, it doesn't really matter that the effect goes away when controling for selected student characteristics. First off this was from 2006, we would have to see if any of that has changed. The 2024 numbers are here[1]. But in any case they are not worse than public schools, although they may be no better or slightly worse than a public school in a rich neighborhood or similar.
Considering private schools cost tens of thousands of dollars and get to choose who they admit, as good (in reading) and worse (in math) than schools with similar demographics seems pretty damning, doesn't it?
Damning for who? Education is just one reason parents choose public schools for their children. Depending on the school (eg. Catholic schools) it may be the last thing they care about. Also you should look at the cost per pupil for public schools. It is very high in many states, with the average being $18,000 per student in 2021.[0]
